Just wondering if maybe we should have a methane levels thread similar to the Carbon thread we have. Especially of methane levels over the Arctic which is the place that has many spooked about a abrupt large release of methane that could really lead to spikes in temperatures? I am not aware of any real time tracker of methane levels site but maybe others know.

“"If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money"”

onlooker wrote:Just wondering if maybe we should have a methane levels thread similar to the Carbon thread we have. Especially of methane levels over the Arctic which is the place that has many spooked about a abrupt large release of methane that could really lead to spikes in temperatures? I am not aware of any real time tracker of methane levels site but maybe others know.

II Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Thanks Sub, but this tracks "CarbonTracker-CH4 2012 covers the period 2000 through 2010". I am hoping for one that shows current levels especially over the Arctic on a real time basis if not daily at least weekly.

“"If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money"”

Possibly one of the most critical areas in the climates risk profile. I say this knowing the danger the exponential function in capitalism poses here....these sorts of comments upset certain of the members on here but I would be remiss in not alerting people to this objective reality notwithstanding the fear and resentment such alerts generate.

I cannot find the record methane highs of the arctic blog on the official sites of the NOAA, if they are really 2500 ppb and beyond.....SHTF.If they are around 1900 ppb, very high but not the 50 Gton up for immediate release yet.Nobody has come out with a new estimate of total artic methane release, no more alarms on the ESAS? Whatever happened to Mr Bubble, Liefer and his new findings?Seems he is cruising the US as a happy camper:

Whitefang from the Arctic Blog"This peak level of 2477 ppb isn't the highest recorded the year. As the image below shows and as discussed in a previous post, methane levels as high as 2845 ppb were recorded on April 25, 2015. The average of the daily peaks for this year up to now is 2355 ppb. Very worrying about the above image are the high levels of methane showing up over the Arctic Ocean."

“"If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money"”

Ok Onlooker, I meant that the recorded peak levels need to be verified by others than the blog on the arctic, he needs to provide links to places so we can see for ourselves.Maybe I am not looking carefully enough so someone can give me a hint to the data?I tried the links above but cannot produce graphs with above 2000 ppb.I do like the seawater temp maps but they should be compared with actual measurements as well.

During July 8, 2015, 12-24 hrs, global mean atmospheric methane measured 1830 ppb at 469 mb. This is higher than the 1829 ppb reached on September 4-5, 2014 at the same atmospheric level as measured by the METOP 2-A satellite. (OSPO has changed the color scheme - the numbers tell the story).

Dohboi – Very interesting plot. Did you notice methane levels increased 26% from 1750 to 1900? That was before the industrial revolution (and the beginning of AGW) and during a period when there was almost no manmade methane extraction. You data seem to imply that at least initially the methane increase was a natural phenomenon unrelated to fossil fuel consumption. Granted the current NG extraction process might be adding to the natural release but how do you assign the split?

ROCKMAN wrote:Dohboi – Very interesting plot. Did you notice methane levels increased 26% from 1750 to 1900? That was before the industrial revolution (and the beginning of AGW) and during a period when there was almost no manmade methane extraction. You data seem to imply that at least initially the methane increase was a natural phenomenon unrelated to fossil fuel consumption. Granted the current NG extraction process might be adding to the natural release but how do you assign the split?

ROCKMAN I think there was a lot of man made release going on in that time period, venting methane from coal mining operations. Mining in terms of number of tons was pretty small compared to today, but at the same time there were many thousand small coal mines instead of the relatively fewer big mines today. All of them had to be ventilated to allow the miners to work them by hand without suffocating from the methane and CO2 and other gas emissions of the coal. Many modern mines are huge open pit type mines that individually release more methane than the old tiny mines, but because they are so large the actual number of coal seams being exposed for the first time is much smaller. Some of them have been under excavation for 30 plus years by now like the Powder River Basin mines. They dig off the over burden exposing a lot of the seam in one vast burp, then spend a year or so extracting that section. Compared to the thousands of small seams being worked before 1900 their contribution to atmospheric methane is larger, but all those small mines from 1750-1900 played a role in atmospheric releases.

I should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write, balance accounts, build a wall, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

T - Good point...I didn't think about coal mines. No way to get the figure but I suspect that volume would still be insignificant. And you're still faced with the same problem: how much is due to the NG extraction process vs natural/coal releases? In fact, your coal angle might actually indicate a much smaller contribution of NG drilling then many are blaming. And let's not forget where most of the methane appears to be leaking from: local NG distribution system and homeowners themselves. Recent surveys showed a huge amount of methane was leaking from below the streets of major east coast cities.

And no: high concentrations of methane in the atmosphere above NG producing tends doesn't necessarily indicate leaks from the drilling/frac'ng/production process: most of the natural NG leaks are coincident with NG producing trends.

In tropical environments, hydropower methane emissions have been measured as high as double those of the greenhouse emissions of a coal-fired power plant that generates the same amount of electricity.

Further, although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has guidelines on calculating methane emissions from hydropower dams/reservoirs, there have been very few measurements of these methane emissions at the same time that large hydropower projects are being built by the thousands across the planet. One Brazilian scientist estimates that methane from hydropower currently accounts for 23 percent of all human-caused worldwide methane emissions. As hydropower plants proliferate, that number will only increase.

Hydropower is almost always greenwashed and sold to the public and policymakers as “clean energy” and “carbon-free.” Even though the IPCC lists hydropower’s methane emissions as a greenhouse gas source, and over a decade of science refutes the claim that hydropower is clean energy, the myth of carbon-free hydropower is embedded in the Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean Development Mechanism” to address planetary climate change and is increasingly being implemented by countries in attendance at COP 21 in Paris. Even worse, the World Bank still lists, promotes and funds hydropower as “clean energy,” and nearly every country in the world is building hydropower plants under the same auspices. Even the U.S. government still perpetuates the anti-science myth of clean hydropower....Thus, countries that are completely destroying their rivers and their climate with hydropower including Malaysia, Brazil, Guatemala, Russia and even the U.S. don’t even list hydropower as a methane emissions source in their INDC, while including hydropower as a clean energy source, all under the auspices of likely misconstrued or purposely ignored IPCC guidelines.

A team of scientists from Norway, China and the Netherlands has now shown how the size of grains of the molecules that make up the natural structure of methane hydrates determines how they behave if they are loaded with weight or disturbed.

When methane hydrates "melt", they release the methane trapped inside the ice, but because the methane was first trapped under pressure when the hydrate was formed, one cubic metre of solid methane hydrate will release 160 cubic metres of methane gas. That makes them either a potent energy source, or if they melt as the permafrost melts, a potent source of methane, which will act as a greenhouse gas.

But mining methane hydrates as an energy source, an option that is being explored by Japan among others, is technically difficult. Their location on the soft, sediment-loaded edges of the continental shelves makes them difficult to mine, and when they are disturbed, their crystal structure may suddenly dissociate and release the methane trapped inside.

This mechanism has been suggested as one reason why the largest landslide known to humankind, the Storegga Slide, was so destructive. The Storegga Slide took place about 8000 years ago, from an underwater location off the west coast of southern Norway.

The slides - there were three in total - sent a wall of water roaring out across the North Sea and Norwegian Sea. The evidence of the passage of the tsunami wave in Scotland that shows the wave reached heights of 3-6 metres in that region. One hypothesis for the slide was that an earthquake caused the methane hydrates in the region to become unstable and to explosively release their gas.

The simulations showed that the size of the crystals—what researchers call the grain size—that made up the hydrate structure had a great deal to say in terms of how the structure reacted to both kinds of stresses.

In both tensile and compression stress simulations, the surprising finding was that as the grain size got smaller, the hydrates first got stronger, able to tolerate both compression and tensile stress—but only until they reached a certain grain size. If the researchers conducted simulations on grain sizes smaller than those identified as the turning point, the hydrate actually got weaker.

The maximum capacity of the hydrates appears when the grain size is around 15 to 20 nm. This resembles the behaviour of polycrystalline metals, such as copper. However, this is the first time that researchers have seen this type of behaviour in methane hydrates as a material. The grain size-dependent strength and maximum capacity that the researchers found can be used in predicting and preventing the failure of hydrates in the future.

This unexpected rapid weakening of the crystal structure as the grain size gets smaller has important implications for any work in areas where hydrates are found.

The researchers reported that the dissociation of methane hydrates can be triggered by the ground deformation caused by "earthquakes, storms, sea-level fluctuations or man-made disturbances (including well drilling and gas production from hydrate reservoirs)."

On October 15, 2015 a hole appeared in the Arctic Ocean sea ice in an area near the North Pole and the center of the remaining sea ice. This is an extremely remote area, and I'm not aware of any field visits to the site, or aerial flyovers to observe it close up. The hole is clearly visible in satellite images, however.

This hole may be the site of a very large methane plume which has just started -----if it is a methane plume, then it is a plume so large that it is either seeping through a huge region of fractures in the ice or has actually eroded a hole through the Arctic Ocean sea ice which is typically about 3-5 m thick in this area.